Excitement

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 34 of 182 · 20 per page

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  People remarked that he had become a new man, ‘such exquisite things did he now preach’.” When it became clear that the Elector would be hostile to any ‘inno- vations’, Karlstadt ignored him and, on Christmas Day, he invited those present who wished to take Communion to do so, whether or not they had made confession. A thousand people are reported to have attended. To the horror of the canons of All Saints, many of those who took Communion had not kept the obligatory fast but had eaten and drunk beforehand; some were even said to have consumed brandy. Dressed in lay clothing, Karlstadt officiated at Mass in the parish church, and when the wafers were twice dropped — one falling on a man’s coat, another onto the floor — he simply told the parish- ioners to pick them up. Yet touching the Host was too great a taboo even for convinced evangelicals, and Karlstadt had to do it himself. At New Year he celebrated Communion in both kinds again, and this time too a thousand people participated. Wittenberg was undergoing an evangelical revival.” 224 MARTIN LUTHER Just six months after he had written his tract against vows,” Karlstadt acted upon his beliefs. A newsletter, which he may not have written himself, included not only the resolutions of the Augustinian order who met in Wittenberg in January, and a Latin prayer in praise of Luther — ‘We should rather believe one truthful Martin than the whole mob of the papists. We know that Christ was truly reborn through Martin; you, O God, do guard him for us™ — but also the announcement that Karl- stadt was going to marry. On 26 December 1521, Justus Jonas and Melanchthon, along with two wagons filled with ‘educated, valiant people’ from Wittenberg, travelled to the village of Segrehna where they witnessed Karlstadt’s engagement to Anna von Mochau.” Although it squared with his tract on vows, Karlstadt’s decision sat oddly with his admonitions to Gelassenheit, to leaving all human attachments behind. Anna von Mochau was on the face of it an extraordinary choice as bride. Aged fifteen, she was the daughter of a poor nobleman, chosen neither for her looks — she was ‘not very pretty’ according to one contemporary — nor her wealth.™ Interestingly, Luther later made a similar choice, marrying outside the Wittenberg elite, and choosing a former nun who was also from a minor noble family. Status clearly mattered to Karlstadt: his own family claimed nobility, and he used their coat of arms as his ‘brand’.

• From A History of God (1993)

  Other reformers were convinced that forcible repression was not the answer. Islam had always thrived on contact with other civilizations, and they believed that religion was essential for any deep and long-lasting reform of their society. There was a great deal that needed to change; much had become backward-looking; there was superstition and ignorance. Yet Islam had also helped people to cultivate serious understanding: if it were allowed to become unhealthy, the spiritual well-being of Muslims all over the world would also suffer. The Muslim reformers were not hostile to the West. Most found Western ideals of equality, freedom and brotherhood congenial, since Islam shared the values of Judeo-Christianity which had been such an important influence in Europe and the United States. The modernization of Western society had—in some respects—created a new type of equality, and the reformers told their people that these Christians seemed to live better Islamic lives than the Muslims. There was enormous enthusiasm and excitement at this new encounter with Europe. The wealthier Muslims were educated in Europe, absorbed its philosophy, literature and ideals, and came back to their own countries eager to share what they had learned. At the beginning of the twentieth century, almost every single Muslim intellectual was also an ardent admirer of the West.

• From A History of God (1993)

  Shabbetai had a mission to descend into hell before he could achieve the final redemption of Israel. At first Shabbetai would have none of this, but eventually Nathan’s eloquence persuaded him. On May 31, 1665, he was suddenly seized with a manic joy and, with Nathan’s encouragement, he announced his Messianic mission. Leading Rabbis dismissed all this as dangerous nonsense, but many of the Jews of Palestine flocked to Shabbetai, who chose twelve disciples to be the judges of the tribes of Israel, which would soon reassemble. Nathan announced the good news to the Jewish communities in letters to Italy, Holland, Germany and Poland, as well as to the cities of the Ottoman empire, and Messianic excitement spread like wildfire through the Jewish world. Centuries of persecution and ostracism had isolated the Jews of Europe from the mainstream, and this unhealthy state of affairs had conditioned many to believe that the future of the world depended upon the Jews alone. The Sephardim, descendants of the exiled Jews of Spain, had taken Lurianic Kabbalah to their hearts, and many had come to believe in the imminent End of Days. All this helped the cult of Shabbetai Zevi. Throughout Jewish history, there had been many Messianic claimants, but none had ever attracted such massive support. It became dangerous for Jews who had their reservations about Shabbetai to speak out. His supporters came from all classes of Jewish society: rich and poor, learned and uneducated. Pamphlets and broadsheets spread the glad tidings in English, Dutch, German and Italian. In Poland and Lithuania there were public processions in his honor. In the Ottoman empire, prophets wandered through the streets describing visions in which they had seen Shabbetai seated upon a throne. All business ceased; ominously, the Jews of Turkey dropped the name of the sultan from the Sabbath prayers and put in Shabbetai’s name instead. Eventually, when Shabbetai arrived in Istanbul in January 1666, he was arrested as a rebel and imprisoned in Gallipoli. After centuries of persecution, exile and humiliation, there was hope. All over the world, Jews had experienced an inner freedom and liberation that seemed similar to the ecstasy that the Kabbalists had experienced for a few moments when they contemplated the mysterious world of the sefiroth. Now this experience of salvation was no longer simply the preserve of a privileged few but seemed common property. For the first time, Jews felt that their lives had value; redemption was no longer a vague hope for the future but was real and full of meaning in the present. Salvation had come! This sudden reversal made an indelible impression. The eyes of the whole Jewish world were fixed on Gallipoli, where Shabbetai had even made an impression on his captors. The Turkish vizier housed him in considerable comfort.

• From A History of God (1993)

  The terms éclaircissement and Aufklärung have definite religious connotations. The God of Jonathan Edwards also contributed to the revolutionary enthusiasm of 1775. In the eyes of the revivalists, Britain had lost the new light that had shone so brightly during the Puritan revolution and now seemed decadent and regressive. It was Edwards and his colleagues who led Americans of the lower classes to take the first steps toward revolution. Messianism was essential to Edwards’s religion: human effort would hasten the coming of God’s Kingdom, which was attainable and imminent in the New World. The Awakening itself (despite its tragic finale) made people believe that the process of redemption described in the Bible had already begun. God was firmly committed to the project. Edwards gave the doctrine of the Trinity a political interpretation: the Son was “the deity generated by God’s understanding” and thus the blueprint of the New Commonwealth; the Spirit, “the deity subsisting in act,” was the force which would accomplish this master plan in time. 45 In the New World of America, God would thus be able to contemplate his own perfections on earth. The society would express the “excellencies” of God himself. The New England would be a “city on the hill,” a light unto the Gentiles “shining with a reflection of the glory of Jehovah risen upon it, which shall be attractive and ravishing to all.” 46 The God of Jonathan Edwards, therefore, would be incarnated in the Commonwealth: Christ was seen as embodied in a good society. Other Calvinists were in the van of progress: they introduced chemistry into the curriculum in America, and Timothy Dwight, Edwards’s grandson, saw scientific knowledge as a prelude to the final perfection of humanity. Their God did not necessarily mean obscurantism, as the American liberals sometimes imagined. The Calvinists disliked Newton’s cosmology, which left God with little to do once he had got things started. As we have seen, they preferred a God who was literally active in the world: their doctrine of predestination showed that in their view God was actually responsible for everything that happened here below, for good or ill.

• From A History of God (1993)

  Muslims regarded the new Turkey and Iran with suspicion and fascination. In Iran there was already an established tradition whereby the mullahs opposed the shahs in the name of the people. They sometimes achieved extraordinary success. In 1872, when the shah sold the monopoly for the production, sale and export of tobacco to the British, putting Iranian manufacturers out of business, the mullahs issued a fatwa forbidding Iranians to smoke. The shah was forced to rescind the concessions. The holy city of Qom became an alternative to the despotic and increasingly draconian regime in Teheran. Repression of religion can breed fundamentalism, just as inadequate forms of theism can result in a rejection of God. In Turkey, the closure of the madrasahs led inevitably to the decline of the authority of the ulema . This meant that the more educated, sober and responsible element in Islam declined, while the more extravagant forms of underground Sufism were the only forms of religion left. Other reformers were convinced that forcible repression was not the answer. Islam had always thrived on contact with other civilizations, and they believed that religion was essential for any deep and long-lasting reform of their society. There was a great deal that needed to change; much had become backward-looking; there was superstition and ignorance. Yet Islam had also helped people to cultivate serious understanding: if it were allowed to become unhealthy, the spiritual well-being of Muslims all over the world would also suffer. The Muslim reformers were not hostile to the West. Most found Western ideals of equality, freedom and brotherhood congenial, since Islam shared the values of Judeo-Christianity which had been such an important influence in Europe and the United States. The modernization of Western society had—in some respects—created a new type of equality, and the reformers told their people that these Christians seemed to live better Islamic lives than the Muslims. There was enormous enthusiasm and excitement at this new encounter with Europe. The wealthier Muslims were educated in Europe, absorbed its philosophy, literature and ideals, and came back to their own countries eager to share what they had learned. At the beginning of the twentieth century, almost every single Muslim intellectual was also an ardent admirer of the West. The reformers all had an intellectual bias, and yet they were also nearly all associated with some form of Islamic mysticism. The more imaginative and intelligent forms of Sufism and Ishraqi mysticism had helped Muslims in previous crises, and they turned toward them again. The experience of God was not regarded as a clog but as a force for transformation at a deep level that would hasten the transition to modernity. Thus the Iranian reformer Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani (1838–87) was an adept of the Ishraqi mysticism of Suhrawardi at the same time as he was a passionate advocate of modernization. As he toured Iran, Afghanistan, Egypt and India, al-Afghani attempted to be all things to all men.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Banished from Mihlhausen in late 1524, Miintzer returned with popular support in February 1525, to a reformed city under the influence of the radical preacher Heinrich Pfeiffer. This was a world made anew, as people were fired by the ideals of godly law and Christian brotherhood. Together Pfeiffer and Miintzer created an Eternal Council, a group of committed followers who replaced what had been an elected oligarchy, and set about forming alliances with like-minded towns. Miintzer prepared for the apocalypse. “Don’t let your sword get cold, don’t let it hang down limply! Hammer away ding-dong on the anvils of Nimrod, cast down their tower to the ground!’ he wrote to the people of Allstedt, urging them to join in the rebellion. ‘Go to it, go to it, go to it’, he urged repeatedly in this letter, and one can get an echo of what must have been electrifying preaching — a heady brew of visual metaphor, rhythmic repetition, and violent language.’ Miintzer was particularly eager to attract the miners, and many of those from the Mansfeld region where Luther had grown up were drawn to his movement. By early May, the Miihlhausen-Thuringian peasant army was plundering convents and castles and forcing local nobles in the Bichsfeld to join by entering into a Christian covenant; only Count Ernst, Miintzer’s long-standing foe since the Allstedt days, remained firm. But then the peasant army split. No more than a small contingent went to join the Frankenhausen band, which desperately needed reinforcements, whilst the rest headed back for Mihlhausen. Miintzer mustered only 300 men to accompany him to Frankenhausen. By the time they arrived on 12 May, the revolt there had lost momentum. Stuck in the town, the peasant army was unable to continue its advance. Miintzer pushed for a confrontation with the region’s rulers. He ended the overtures that had been made to Count Ernst and Count 264 MARTIN LUTHER Albrecht of Mansfeld and his correspondence became increasingly driven by his hatred of Luther and the princes. As he wrote to Count Ernst: ‘Brother Ernst, just tell us, you miserable, wretched sack of worms, who made you a prince over the people whom God redeemed with his dear blood? You shall and will have to prove that you are a Christian’; while to Count Albrecht of Mansfeld, Luther’s supporter, he wrote on the same day: ‘Couldn't you find in your Lutheran pudding and your Wittenberg soup what Ezekiel has prophesied in his thirty- seventh chapter?

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Luther had known what was coming, but he was in exhilarated mood. Comparing his travails at Worms with Christ’s Passion and Resurrection, he had written to Cranach on 28 April, two days after leaving Worms: ‘For a little while we must suffer and be silent. A little time, and you will not see me again; a little more time and you will see me.” ¢ — june bias of tad wes sricsi en nates pind am ALE Pelee co ps ie BA a nee eS bode ad ~ A at 3 5 7 a > ts Oe rs sf tEs 4 ees i are om at alter send 2 . . mig Ord feniicled wie ay) — —_ fy. r¢ Dy + rns ‘= on = Sahay v Ast asd Para a ett tena a ieee > Se sas 2 = os ¥ ot patie = . “ey oe «3 mf a aS “4 kts vid ied” 3 anya nti eee ae Th} yi aad ee ae Pdr ieay Peegeeh hy Pteary) To bqends BH, A" cae ois RP ta teoeeids eis ey jem 72 7 7 sa bate rae be 2662 nee we y 5 _ =— 7 ‘ cut oe asl” abite Lije See bad sag » oe 1h “te . . 5 > arte pone <a rie be iv oo OPse — Sire ksier a} wc) bein d Gs Og, Se *awies« A) ov _— re i he Ps 2 Ceres hae Shy er remy 7 ee > ost hang Bait thls atone de ie hewn ee Tema. abr Nae euitce me chives We Witcsh nxt ewtiedge we AegePAG, Aire Pee Se Saree Pinang fy be Fea EY 2? ee as fais) 5 ire oh un Eaton bah 0 Pier Se, Cor 2 Nie ate oO A CT remot 4 willy -es ait oA tec wa dil re vests AUN A OME hie yah Le ma weskey 5 wey-+e rai ~~ thew We end phe Ae tate? Eh” ee a uaetaharnenaiaabel mie be ahaa et. antes at AS Se z vm a ae * e ei pe 9 In the Wartburg No one was to know Luther’s whereabouts. After the excitement of Worms, where the great princes of the empire had queued up to meet him, where he had been surrounded by supporters and friends from dawn till dusk, and where his every word had been noted and its significance weighed, Luther was now alone. On 4 May, having visited his relatives in Méhra on his way back from the Diet, Luther had been kidnapped near Burg Altenstein and brought by a circuitous route to Wartburg Castle, towering high up above Eisenach, hidden in the woods. The castle walls are hewn into the rock of the hills with views on three sides; to Luther it felt as if he was in the kingdom of the birds.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  But on rereading the text he decided that Luther was correct, and began to be influenced by Luther's understanding of Augustine.* Both radical and passionate, Karlstadt easily got lost in the thread of his own thought and needed direction: Luther’s intensity seems to have unleashed his creativity, sparking him to rethink all his intellectual and spiritual positions. Schurff, more cautious by nature, was also capti- vated, perhaps because Luther was able to articulate the desperation and sense of sinfulness he too had felt. Luther clearly had an intel- lectual drive that drew others to him, in part because they recognised their own ideas in what he argued. He was intellectually independent and decisive, and could communicate complex opinions with passion. His energy and conviction rather than intellectual superiority may explain why he became the leading figure at Wittenberg so quickly. These were exciting times as a generation of intellectuals felt that they witnessed the dawn of a new era. It seemed that scholasticism, with its tortured deference to Aristotle, was finished. The university syllabus at Wittenberg had been a careful compromise between via moderna and via antiqua, but by 1516 Johannes Lang was enthusing that students were ‘eagerly hearing lectures on the Bible and the Church Fathers, while the so-called scholastic doctors have hardly two or three listeners’.” In 1517-18 Luther lectured on Hebrews, Karlstadt on Augus- tine, the humanist Aesticampianus on Jerome — this was a whole programme of study invigorated by a humanist-style return to the sources. There were also causes to be passionate about. Humanists united to defend the Hebrew scholar Johannes Reuchlin when he was perse- cuted by the Dominicans of Cologne, who wanted to destroy all Hebrew texts. Spalatin sought Luther's view of the affair in 1514 and received a forthright reply, defending the man whose grammar Luther 94 MARTIN LUTHER himself had used when he learnt Hebrew with Lang in Erfurt. Jewish blasphemy, Luther argued, could not be purged as the Dominicans demanded, because the prophets of the Old Testament foretold that the Jews would insult and blaspheme against Christ, so destroying it would delete the evidence and turn God and the prophets into liars. This insight clearly gripped him, ‘more than language can say’, and he insisted that those who did not understand this paradox understood nothing of theology. He showed no sympathy with Jewish writings for their own sake, however: he would maintain throughout his life that these were indeed blasphemous.“ Two of Luther’s most significant writings from this time were theses of disputation composed for his students, like the one he had composed for Bernhardi. The custom was for the pupil to expound theses that reflected the master’s views as part of their progression through the degrees.

• From A History of God (1993)

  The study of history was dominated by a new myth: that of Progress. It achieved great things, but now that damage to the environment has made us realize that this way of life is as vulnerable as the old, we are, perhaps, beginning to grasp that it is as fictitious as most of the other mythologies that have inspired humanity over the centuries. While the pooling of resources and discoveries drew people together, the new specialization inevitably pulled them apart in other ways. Hitherto it had been possible for an intellectual to keep abreast of knowledge on all fronts. The Muslim Faylasufs, for example, had been proficient in medicine, philosophy and aesthetics. Indeed, Falsafah had offered its disciples a coherent and inclusive account of what was believed to be the whole of reality. By the seventeenth century, the process of specialization that would become so marked a feature of Western society was beginning to make itself felt. The various disciplines of astronomy, chemistry and geometry were beginning to become independent and autonomous. Ultimately in our own day it would be impossible for an expert in one field to feel any competence whatever in another. It followed that every major intellectual saw himself less as a conserver of tradition than as a pioneer. He was an explorer, like the navigators who had penetrated to new parts of the globe. He was venturing into hitherto uncharted realms for the sake of his society. The innovator who made such an effort of imagination to break new ground and, in the process, overthrow old sanctities, became a cultural hero. There was new optimism about humanity as control over the natural world, which had once held mankind in thrall, appeared to advance in leaps and bounds. People began to believe that better education and improved laws could bring light to the human spirit. This new confidence in the natural powers of human beings meant that people came to believe that they could achieve enlightenment by means of their own exertions. They no longer felt that they needed to rely on inherited tradition, an institution or an elite—or, even, a revelation from God—to discover the truth. Yet the experience of specialization meant that people involved in the process of specialization were increasingly unable to see the whole picture. Consequently innovative scientists and intellectuals felt obliged to work out their own theories of life and religion, starting from scratch. They felt that their own enhanced knowledge and effectiveness gave them the duty to look again at the traditional Christian explanations of reality and bring them up to date.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Karlstadt returned to the theme in 1523, publishing a far longer meditation on the meanings of Gelassenheit. Here it was clearly linked with asceticism. ‘All pleasure is sin’, he wrote. ‘It would be better for us were we to sprinkle food and drink with ashes than to have our food praised in song.’ The believer must develop ‘a holy dread of myself’ and ‘become wholly ashamed of my thoughts, desires, and works as of a horrible vice which I would avoid as one avoids a yellow, pus-filled boil’. Karlstadt took the reader through different kinds of detachment, including ‘yieldedness of intellect’ and finally even ‘letting go of Scripture’ itself: understanding its spirit was more important than the letter of the Word of God. The term he used for this process of detachment was to have a ‘circumcised heart’, as if true believers must be set apart in tribal fashion.” For Luther, it was the conviction that all our works are sinful and that we are saved by God’s grace alone that led to a sense of freedom. If everything we do is tainted with sin, then asceticism has no point; instead we should enjoy God’s creation. His position was both different from medieval Catholicism, which valued renouncing the flesh, or from what would become Calvinism, which was obsessed with disciplining pleasure. For Karlstadt, on the other hand, the aim of KARLSTADT AND THE CHRISTIAN CITY OF WITTENBERG 223 Gelassenheit was to arrive at a complete surrender of the self and a merging with God so that the believer becomes ‘immersed in God’s will’. It is a state of mystical receptivity and openness where the boundaries between oneself and God disappear — as if one were to return to the womb where there is no separation between mother and child. Thus Karlstadt’s striving for Gelassenheit — his tract outlining the different stages for its achievement — came pretty close to the kind of willed state of perfection which Luther rejected. Indeed, Luther would later charge Karlstadt with setting up, just like the monks, ‘a new kind of mortification, that is, a self-chosen putting to death of the flesh’.* This was the man who, just before Christmas 1521, openly defied the Elector and announced that he would administer Communion in both kinds at New Year in the Castle Church. Cautious and even punctilious by nature, and slow to change, once convinced, he had all the passion of the convert. He believed he was witnessing the triumph of the gospel, and he committed himself utterly to what he termed ‘the Christian City of Wittenberg’. The academic was becoming a bold popular leader. Whereas earlier he had avoided preaching, now Karl- stadt preached frequently and with passion.

• From Satyricon (1)

  But we were not given long in which to admire the elegance of such service, for all of a sudden the ceiling commenced to creak and then the whole dining-room shook. I leaped to my feet in consternation, for fear some rope-walker would fall down, and the rest of the company raised their faces, wondering as much as I what new prodigy was to be announced from on high. Then lo and behold! the ceiling panels parted and an enormous hoop, which appeared to have been knocked off a huge cask, was lowered from the dome above; its perimeter was hung with golden chaplets and jars of alabaster filled with perfume. We were asked to accept these articles as souvenirs. When my glance returned to the table, I noticed that a dish containing cakes had been placed upon it, and in the middle an image of Priapus, made by the baker, and he held apples of all varieties and bunches of grapes against his breast, in the conventional manner. We applied ourselves wholeheartedly to this dessert and our joviality was suddenly revived by a fresh diversion, for, at the slightest pressure, all the cakes and fruits would squirt a saffron sauce upon us, and even spurted unpleasantly into our faces. Being convinced that these perfumed dainties had some religious significance, we arose in a body and shouted, “Hurrah for the Emperor, the father of his country!” However, as we perceived that even after this act of veneration, the others continued helping themselves, we filled our napkins with the apples. I was especially keen on this, for I thought I could never put enough good things into Giton’s lap. Three slaves entered, in the meantime, dressed in white tunics well tucked up, and two of them placed Lares with amulets hanging from their necks, upon the table, while the third carried round a bowl of wine and cried, “May the gods be propitious!” One was called Cerdo--business--, Trimalchio informed us, the other Lucrio--luck--and the third Felicio--profit--and, when all the rest had kissed a true likeness of Trimalchio, we were ashamed to pass it by. CHAPTER THE SIXTY-FIRST.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  1517: he had enclosed a letter for Trutfetter in his letter to Lang, which suggested that he and Usingen give up the study of Aristotle, Porphyry and the commentaries on Peter Lombard. WB 1, 75, 18 May 1518, 173, n.12: Luther must have seen Trutfetter after all, probably on ro May. WB 1, 74, 9 May 1518, 169:13-14; 33-8; the earlier letter to Lang, WB 1, 64, 21 March 1518. Egranus had also raised doubts about the legends of the three Marys and was involved in disputes with Wimpina and Diingersheim. Luther’s letter prefacing Egranus’s pamphlet appeared in print in late March or early April 1518, WS 1, 315-16; and WB 155, 20 Dec. 1517 (to Spalatin). WB 1, 74, 9 May 1518, 170:44-5; 171:78—80; 81; 87; 85. Indeed, a year later, Trutfetter was dead: WB 1, 184, to Lang, 6 June 1519. Luther noted laconically that Trutfetter had departed this life. May God receive his soul and forgive him all his sins, and ours, he commented. WB I, 75, 18 May 1518. Vandiver, Keen and Frazel (eds and trs), Luther’s Lives, 155. WB 1, 74, 9 May 1518: in the whole university, Luther insisted, only one scholar did not support him, and that person did not yet have his doctorate. Thomas Kaufmann, ‘Argumentative Impressionen. Bucers Bericht von der Heidelberger Disputation’ in Kaufmann (ed.), Der Anfang der Refor- mation; Brecht, Luther, I, 216. Greschat, Bucer, 21-35. As well as Frecht, Billican, and Brenz, Eberhard Schnepf had also possibly been at Heidelberg. All would become impor- tant reformers in south Germany. WB 1, 83, 10 July 151, 186:51. Luther had sent his manuscript reply via Wenzeslaus Linck in Nuremberg from whom he had received Eck’s text. No one else, he insisted, had seen it. WB 1, 77, 19 May 1518, 178:28-30. Originally Karlstadt had written 380 theses but, always one for overkill, added more at proof stage; WB 1, 82, 15 June 1518. Bagchi, Luther’s Earliest Opponents, 20-2. 458 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37- MARTIN LUTHER Wicks, Cajetan. WB 1, 83, 10 July 1518: Luther made light of it, saying that he would be either strangled or baptised to death. LW Letters, I, 74; WB 1, 87, 28 Aug. 1518, 190:10—-16. WB 1, 87, 28 Aug. 1518; WB 1, 92, 5 Sept. 1518 (Spalatin to Luther). Luther had asked Spalatin directly to secure the support of the Elector, because it concerned the honour of the university as well as Luther, WB 1, 85, 8 Aug.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  In line with Luther’s strictures in To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, the money should be spent on supporting Wittenberg’s own poor, not on outsiders, and certainly not on mendicant monks. It seemed as if the Reformation, under the guidance of the Augus- tinians and the town council, was about to be perfected in Wittenberg. The Augustinian prior of Eisleben, Caspar Giittel, who attended the chapter meeting in Wittenberg in January 1522, wrote to a friend about his conviction that he was living in exceptional times: ‘It looks to me as if God intends to offer us all great grace and high seriousness.’ That sense of excitement is also evident in a newsletter report from early January: ‘The prince can no longer stop matters, let other princes do what they will, they won't be able to prevent or suppress it; it is from or by God, we will yet see miracles; all around in all little towns strange events and happenings are taking place, may God grant His grace, Amen.’ The author went on to report how a merchant had arrived in Wittenberg, asking for the Augustinian monastery. When locals pointed it out, he tied up his horse, went inside and found only one monk left. Stretching out his arms in the shape of the Cross, he gave God praise and thanks, and wept from his heart, rejoicing that he could tread the ground of ‘the holy city’.* IO Karlstadt and the Christian City of Wittenberg Luther’s friendship with Andreas Karlstadt is airbrushed out of most biographies of the reformer, starting with those by Mathesius and Spangenberg in the late sixteenth century.’ Karlstadt had originally idolised Luther, acted as his right-hand man and his co-debater at Leipzig, and led the way on several key theological issues. Yet the debt Luther owed him is often forgotten.* Luther followed in his wake in his theses against scholasticism, and it was Karlstadt who first saw the propaganda potential of images and articulated the argument for breaking monastic vows. The story of their tortured relationship explains not only some key psychological and emotional patterns in Luther’s life; it also illuminates why Luther's theology, and with it the Reformation as a whole, took the path that it did. During Luther’s time in the Wartburg, Karlstadt played a major part in introducing the Reformation in Wittenberg. To start with, however, he had been far from radical.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  Manuel watched them for a few moments, his face glowing and expanding in a smile. He was taken with a slight trembling, like that of a man anticipating great pleasures. He wanted to move into the apartment immediately, but when evening came and he persuaded Thérèse to come and inspect it, she saw nothing but two uninhabitable rooms, dirty and neglected. Manuel repeated, “But there is light, there is light for painting, and there is a terrace.” Thérèse shrugged her shoulders and said, “I wouldn’t live here.” Then Manuel became crafty. He bought paint, cement and wood. He rented the two rooms and devoted himself to fixing them. He had never liked work, yet this time he set about doing the most meticulous carpentry and paint job ever seen, to make the place beautiful for Thérèse. As he painted, patched, cemented and hammered, he could hear the laughter of the little girls playing in the yard. But he contained himself, waiting for the right moment. He spun fantasies of what his life would be in this apartment across from a girls’ school. In two weeks the place was transformed. The walls were white, the doors closed properly, the closets could be used, the floors no longer had holes in them. Then he brought Thérèse to see it. She was quite overwhelmed and immediately agreed to move. In one day their belongings were brought on a cart. In this new place, Manuel said, he could paint because of the light. He was dancing about, gay and changed. Thérèse was happy to see him in such a mood. The next morning, when things were but half-unpacked and they had slept on beds without sheets, Thérèse went to her trapeze work and Manuel was left alone to arrange things. But instead of unpacking he went downstairs and walked to the bird market. There he spent the grocery money that Thérèse had given him to buy a cage and two tropical birds. He went home and hung the cage outside on the terrace. He looked down for a moment at the little girls playing, watching their legs under the fluttering skirts. How they fell upon each other in games, how their hair flew behind as they ran! Their tiny new breasts were already beginning to show in their very plumpness. His face was flushed, but he did not linger. He had a plan, and it was too perfect to surrender now. For three days he spent the food money on birds of every kind. The terrace was now alive with birds. Each morning at ten o’clock Thérèse was off to work, and the apartment was filled with sunlight and the laughter and cries of little girls.

• From Satyricon (1)

  “She began to dance languidly, carelessly, as if already weary. Above her head she swung copper bells, castanets or ‘crotals,’--swung them lazily, so that they tinkled very faintly. Gradually her movements became more emphatic, and suddenly under their long lashes, yellow eyes shone out, clear and bright as the eyes of a leopardess. She drew her body up to her full height and the copper castanets began to tinkle with such challenge in their piercing sound that the whole crowd trembled with emotion. Vivid, slender, supple as a serpent, the damsel whirled rapidly, her nostrils dilated, and a strange cry came crooning from her throat. With each impetuous movement, two dark little breasts held tight by a green silk net, trembled like two ripe fruits in the wind, and their sharp, thickly painted nipples were like rubies, as they protruded from the net. “The crowd was beside itself with passion. Agamemnon, nearly mad, was held back by his companions. Suddenly the girl stopped as if exhausted. A slight shudder ran through her, from her head down the dark limbs to her feet. Deep silence prevailed. The head of the Nubian was thrown back as if in a rigid swoon but above it the crotals still tinkled with an extraordinary languor, a dying vibration, quick and soft as the wing flutterings of a captured butterfly. Her eyes grew dim but in their inner depths glittered two sparks; the face remained severe, impersonal, but upon the sensuous red lips of that sphinx-like mouth a smile trembled, faint as the dying sound of the crotals.” ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: Double capacity of masseurs and prostitutes Empress Theodora belonged to this class High fortune may rather master us, than we master it Legislation has never proved a success in repressing vice One could do a man no graver injury than to call him a dancer Russia there is a sect called the skoptzi She is chaste whom no man has solicited--Ovid Tax on bachelors While we live, let us live SIX NOTES BY MARCHENA. TO THE ARMY OF THE RHINE. The conquests of the French have resulted, during this war, in a boon to knowledge and to letters. Egypt has furnished us with monuments of its aboriginal inhabitants, which the ignorance and superstition of the Copts and Mussulmans kept concealed from civilized countries. The libraries of the convents of the various countries have been ransacked by savants and precious manuscripts have been brought to light.

• From Satyricon (1)

  “She began to dance languidly, carelessly, as if already weary. Above her head she swung copper bells, castanets or ‘crotals,’--swung them lazily, so that they tinkled very faintly. Gradually her movements became more emphatic, and suddenly under their long lashes, yellow eyes shone out, clear and bright as the eyes of a leopardess. She drew her body up to her full height and the copper castanets began to tinkle with such challenge in their piercing sound that the whole crowd trembled with emotion. Vivid, slender, supple as a serpent, the damsel whirled rapidly, her nostrils dilated, and a strange cry came crooning from her throat. With each impetuous movement, two dark little breasts held tight by a green silk net, trembled like two ripe fruits in the wind, and their sharp, thickly painted nipples were like rubies, as they protruded from the net. “The crowd was beside itself with passion. Agamemnon, nearly mad, was held back by his companions. Suddenly the girl stopped as if exhausted. A slight shudder ran through her, from her head down the dark limbs to her feet. Deep silence prevailed. The head of the Nubian was thrown back as if in a rigid swoon but above it the crotals still tinkled with an extraordinary languor, a dying vibration, quick and soft as the wing flutterings of a captured butterfly. Her eyes grew dim but in their inner depths glittered two sparks; the face remained severe, impersonal, but upon the sensuous red lips of that sphinx-like mouth a smile trembled, faint as the dying sound of the crotals.” ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: Double capacity of masseurs and prostitutes Empress Theodora belonged to this class High fortune may rather master us, than we master it Legislation has never proved a success in repressing vice One could do a man no graver injury than to call him a dancer Russia there is a sect called the skoptzi She is chaste whom no man has solicited--Ovid Tax on bachelors While we live, let us live SIX NOTES BY MARCHENA. TO THE ARMY OF THE RHINE. The conquests of the French have resulted, during this war, in a boon to knowledge and to letters. Egypt has furnished us with monuments of its aboriginal inhabitants, which the ignorance and superstition of the Copts and Mussulmans kept concealed from civilized countries. The libraries of the convents of the various countries have been ransacked by savants and precious manuscripts have been brought to light.

• From Satyricon (1)

  While he was speaking, four dancers ran in to the time of the music, and removed the upper part of the tray. Beneath, on what seemed to be another tray, we caught sight of stuffed capons and sows’ bellies, and in the middle, a hare equipped with wings to resemble Pegasus. At the corners of the tray we also noted four figures of Marsyas and from their bladders spouted a highly spiced sauce upon fish which were swimming about as if in a tide-race. All of us echoed the applause which was started by the servants, and fell to upon these exquisite delicacies, with a laugh. “Carver,” cried Trimalchio, no less delighted with the artifice practised upon us, and the carver appeared immediately. Timing his strokes to the beat of the music he cut up the meat in such a fashion as to lead you to think that a gladiator was fighting from a chariot to the accompaniment of a water-organ. Every now and then Trimalchio would repeat “Carver, Carver,” in a low voice, until I finally came to the conclusion that some joke was meant in repeating a word so frequently, so I did not scruple to question him who reclined above me. As he had often experienced byplay of this sort he explained, “You see that fellow who is carving the meat, don’t you? Well, his name is Carver. Whenever Trimalchio says Carver, carve her, by the same word, he both calls and commands!” CHAPTER THE THIRTY-SEVENTH.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  —THIS was the man who, just before Christmas 1521, openly defied the Elector and announced that he would administer Communion in both kinds at New Year in the Castle Church. Cautious and even punctilious by nature, and slow to change, once convinced, he had all the passion of the convert. He believed he was witnessing the triumph of the gospel, and he committed himself utterly to what he termed “the Christian City of Wittenberg.” The academic was becoming a bold popular leader. Whereas earlier he had avoided preaching, now Karlstadt preached frequently and with passion. People remarked that he had become a new man, “such exquisite things did he now preach.”19 When it became clear that the Elector would be hostile to any “innovations,” Karlstadt ignored him and, on Christmas Day, he invited those present who wished to take Communion to do so, whether or not they had made confession. A thousand people are reported to have attended. To the horror of the canons of All Saints, many of those who took Communion had not kept the obligatory fast but had eaten and drunk beforehand; some were even said to have consumed brandy. Dressed in lay clothing, Karlstadt officiated at Mass in the parish church, and when the wafers were twice dropped—one falling on a man’s coat, another onto the floor—he simply told the parishioners to pick them up. Yet touching the Host was too great a taboo even for convinced evangelicals, and Karlstadt had to do it himself. At New Year he celebrated Communion in both kinds again, and this time too a thousand people participated. Wittenberg was undergoing an evangelical revival.20 Just six months after he had written his tract against vows,21 Karlstadt acted upon his beliefs. A newsletter, which he may not have written himself, included not only the resolutions of the Augustinian order who met in Wittenberg in January, and a Latin prayer in praise of Luther—“We should rather believe one truthful Martin than the whole mob of the papists. We know that Christ was truly reborn through Martin; you, O God, do guard him for us”22—but also the announcement that Karlstadt was going to marry. On December 26, 1521, Justus Jonas and Melanchthon, along with two wagons filled with “educated, valiant people” from Wittenberg, traveled to the village of Segrehna, where they witnessed Karlstadt’s engagement to Anna von Mochau.23 Although it squared with his tract on vows, Karlstadt’s decision sat oddly with his admonitions to Gelassenheit, to leaving all human attachments behind.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  His energy and conviction rather than intellectual superiority may explain why he became the leading figure at Wittenberg so quickly. — T HESE were exciting times as a generation of intellectuals felt that they witnessed the dawn of a new era. It seemed that scholasticism, with its tortured deference to Aristotle, was finished. The university syllabus at Wittenberg had been a careful compromise between via moderna and via antiqua, but by 1516 Johannes Lang was enthusing that students were “eagerly hearing lectures on the Bible and the Church Fathers, while the so-called scholastic doctors have hardly two or three listeners.” 43 In 1517–18 Luther lectured on Hebrews, Karlstadt on Augustine, the humanist Aesticampianus on Jerome—this was a whole program of study invigorated by a humanist-style return to the sources. There were also causes to be passionate about. Humanists united to defend the Hebrew scholar Johannes Reuchlin when he was persecuted by the Dominicans of Cologne, who wanted to destroy all Hebrew texts. Spalatin sought Luther’s view of the affair in 1514 and received a forthright reply, defending the man whose grammar Luther himself had used when he learned Hebrew with Lang in Erfurt. Jewish blasphemy, Luther argued, could not be purged as the Dominicans demanded, because the prophets of the Old Testament foretold that the Jews would insult and blaspheme against Christ, so destroying it would delete the evidence and turn God and the prophets into liars. This insight clearly gripped him, “more than language can say,” and he insisted that those who did not understand this paradox understood nothing of theology. He showed no sympathy with Jewish writings for their own sake, however: He would maintain throughout his life that these were indeed blasphemous. 44 Two of Luther’s most significant writings from this time were theses of disputation composed for his students, like the one he had composed for Bernhardi. The custom was for the pupil to expound theses that reflected the master’s views as part of their progression through the degrees. Ritualized debates, they depended on skill in argument and rhetoric, and provided a kind of licensed intellectual aggression. With the position set out as a series of related sequential claims, it was easier to accept or reject particular points of the argument, and to inspect the links between one proposition and another. It permitted intellectual adventurousness and freedom, because ideas could be tried out, without claiming that they were established truths. Such tests and intellectual combat greatly appealed to Luther, and the Reformation would develop the technique into a high art.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  It seemed as if the Reformation, under the guidance of the Augustinians and the town council, was about to be perfected in Wittenberg. The Augustinian prior of Eisleben, Caspar Güttel, who attended the chapter meeting in Wittenberg in January 1522, wrote to a friend about his conviction that he was living in exceptional times: “It looks to me as if God intends to offer us all great grace and high seriousness.” That sense of excitement is also evident in a newsletter report from early January: “The prince can no longer stop matters, let other princes do what they will, they won’t be able to prevent or suppress it; it is from or by God, we will yet see miracles; all around in all little towns strange events and happenings are taking place, may God grant His grace, Amen.”60 The author went on to report how a merchant had arrived in Wittenberg, asking for the Augustinian monastery. When locals pointed it out, he tied up his horse, went inside, and found only one monk left. Stretching out his arms in the shape of the Cross, he gave God praise and thanks, and wept from his heart, rejoicing that he could tread the ground of “the holy city.”61 [image "10. Karlstadt and the Christian City of Wittenberg" file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_046_r1.jpg] [image "10. Karlstadt and the Christian City of Wittenberg" file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_046_r1.jpg] LUTHER’S FRIENDSHIP WITH Andreas Karlstadt is airbrushed out of most biographies of the reformer, starting with those by Mathesius and Spangenberg in the late sixteenth century.1 Karlstadt had originally idolized Luther, acted as his right-hand man and his co-debater at Leipzig, and led the way on several key theological issues. Yet the debt Luther owed him is often forgotten.2 Luther followed in his wake in his theses against scholasticism, and it was Karlstadt who first saw the propaganda potential of images and articulated the argument for breaking monastic vows. The story of their tortured relationship not only explains some key psychological and emotional patterns in Luther’s life; it also illuminates why Luther’s theology, and with it the Reformation as a whole, took the path that it did. During Luther’s time in the Wartburg, Karlstadt played a major part in introducing the Reformation in Wittenberg. To start with, however, he had been far from radical. Until the end of 1521, he had consistently urged caution against Melanchthon’s enthusiasm and distanced himself from any signs of disorder. In October that year, during a disputation on the Mass, he had been careful to ensure that all points of view were represented, and held the position that private Masses should not simply be abolished. With his training in law and his experience, he was probably more clear-sighted than others about the huge legal and financial consequences, arguing that the consent of the whole community should be sought before changes were carried out. Melanchthon, by contrast, wanted private Masses dispensed with right away.3